In 1875 Doctor Charles E. Michael, an ophthalmologist, of St. Louis, Mo., developed a technique using electric current generated by a battery cell that controlled permanent hair removal. This marked the beginning of what is known as electrolysis.
For a great many years, electrolysis used only a direct current, which produces a chemical reaction of sodium hydroxide, or lye. The sodium hydroxide is caustic and literally eats away at the hair.
Direct current electrolysis causes a low rate of regrowth, however it takes a substantial period of time (one to three minutes) for each hair follicle. Therefore, considering the wages of an electrologist, direct current electrolysis becomes quite expensive. Also, direct current electrolysis is somewhat painful to the patient.
In recent years, a new electrolysis technique, called "thermolysis" became prevalent. Thermolysis used a probe in the same manner as direct current electrolysis used a probe. However, with thermolysis, instead of direct current, a high frequency sinusoidal voltage is injected into the follicle. The radio frequency tends to physically cook the follicle.
Thermolysis has a primary advantage in that it is exceedingly fast and can be even faster than a tenth of a second for high intensity burst of radio frequency energy.
The heating pattern of thermolysis is narrow and has a less permanent effect when treating a heavy or curly hair only once. It is to be kept in mind that any portion of the hair follicle that has not been destroyed will be capable of regrowing.
Most recently, a new technique came to pass which is frequently called the "blend" technique. This blend technique combines the direct current technique with the radio frequency technique. The radio frequency technique causes heat in the follicle which increases the rate of chemical reaction for the direct current. The heat also tends to open the tissue allowing the lye to penetrate the tissue much more quickly. The result is all the reliability and low regrowth rates of the direct current technique has been obtained within a substantially shorter period of time.
Normal treatment time for the blend technique is about twenty to thirty seconds. This is considerably longer than the thermolysis technique by itself, but also substantially shorter than the direct current electrolysis by itself. Also, using the blend technique, uniform reliability throughout all different hair types is obtained.
It should be kept in mind that the time variation of any technique has to do with the pain threshold of a particular patient. If the patient can undergo a higher level of pain, he can then have the hair removed more quickly than another patient who is more sensitive to pain. The time variation of the present invention has to do with the hair removal rate verses the amount of regrowth of hair from a treated follicle.
The current invention suggests the use of the blend technique to treat pseudofolliculitis barbae but is not limited to the direct current and thermolysis methods.
Pseudofolliculitis barbae is the clinical name given to the condition commonly referred to as "razor bumps." Generally, the condition describes the ingrowth of emerged facial hairs back into the skin at a location closely adjacent to the follicle from which the hair emerged. This penetration back into the skin causes an antigenic, foreign-body reaction at the point of penetration, resulting in lesions consisting of firm papules and pustules in which the ingrowing hair can become buried. Additional infections can become superimposed on this basic state, augmenting the inflammatory reaction. As a consequence, shaving becomes problematic and painful.
From a purely mechanical point of view, pseudofolliculitis barbae comes about by virtue of strongly curved facial hairs. For this reason, the condition tends to have a greater incidence in males of the Negro race. These curved facial hairs emerge closely parallel to the skin and, owing to their curvature, are biased toward reentry into the skin. Because of their emergence so close to the skin surface, these hairs often are not closely cut at their point of emergence during shaving. In practice, shaving operates to aggravate the condition because shaving serves to obliquely cut the biased hair, above the skin surface, leaving a relatively sharp point at the tip which facilitates skin penetration. As such, the act of shaving is at least a partial cause of the condition itself.
Between one shave and the next, the point or tip of the hair ingrows into the skin bringing about the reaction and condition set forth above.
Those suggestions which exist for dealing with the condition of pseudofolliculitis barbae involve both treatment and prevention. In terms of treatment, it is necessary to treat the causative follicles; and for this reason, the present invention suggests electrolysis. The effects of the condition can then be permanently cured.